Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Monday, March 06, 2017

Trump: Bonkers, Paranoid or Trapped?

My personal view is that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, is mentally ill. At best he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. At worst, he flaming insane. Readers can decide where they place him on the range of insanity. I suspect that even many Trump voters concede that we are not witnessing a normal presidency. The other alternative, as suggested by conservative columnist, Jennifer Rubin, is that Trump is compromised by the Russians either due to blackmail information or he actually colluded with Russian operatives to swing the 2016 election in his favor. If this latter alternative is true, then Trump's seemingly crazy outbursts are aimed at changing the topic and/or distracting the media. The reality is that no matter how hard Trump tries, the pall of the Russian connection is not going to be pushed away. Here are highlights from Rubin's column:

In
the course of less than a week we’ve gone from “Trump
presidency on the rocks” to “What a normal
speech!” to “How many Trump
associates had contact with the Russians, and why did they lie about it?” to “Trump was bugged, really?!?”

There are
several explanations — not necessarily mutually exclusive — for the latest
outburst from the president.

First, he is increasingly out of touch with reality. Just as
he obsessed over the crowd size at his inauguration and the fictional illegal
voters upward of 3 million, Trump’s mammoth ego cannot take the daily drumbeat
of attacks and accusations. When adversity strikes — as it did with new
allegations concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was forced to recuse
himself from any campaign-related investigation — he becomes unhinged and
paranoid. He can stick to a teleprompter speech for an hour, but soon reverts
to form.

A variation on the first possibility would be that Trump
correctly realizes the intelligence community has a good dealmore information on whatcontacts his associates had with Russiansthan he does.A New York Times story
last week confirmed that the intelligence community also has intercepts of
Russian officials discussing their contacts with Trump associates. Trump, under
this theory, is panicked. An exaggerated, unsupported claim from a right-wing
provocateur and gadfly Mark Levin that Trump was directly wiretapped is enough
to set him off into a Twitter frenzy. As they said about Richard Nixon, even
paranoids have enemies.

Another explanation is that Trump, as he does when things go wrong (the
Sessions recusal, disarray on tax and health-care legislation, accusations
about his foreign holdings), deliberately creates distractions. He’d rather the
media chatter about whether he is sane than focus on the need to obtain his
taxes to determine what connections he and his family have to Russia.

And finally, it
is possible that he isrightthat Trump communications were under
investigation — but only up to a point. . . . . . Apart from the server
story,news reports have suggested, as a TIME story did, that “as major banks in America
stopped lending him money following his many bankruptcies, the Trump
organization was forced to seek financing from non-traditional institutions.
Several had direct ties to Russian financial interests in ways that have raised
eyebrows.” (Trump denies he has any ties to Russia. “I can tell you, speaking
for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have
any deals in Russia,”he said recently, leaving open the possibility that he and/or his sons have
ties to Russians operating outside of Russia.)

After Trump’s
Twitter outburst some lawmakers, like Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), chose to take
him “seriously,” that is, to call for proof of his claims. Others argued that
his accusations only underscored the need for a definitive, independent
investigation conducted by either a commission with subpoena power or a special
prosecutor named by the deputy attorney general.

Realizing their
error in inviting more scrutiny, Sean Spicer tried to walk back the allegations
Sunday morning. He called for Congress — which is already investigating Trump’s
Russia connection — to look into improper surveillance during the campaign. He
almost begged the press to drop it, saying that no further remarks on the topic
would be forthcoming. Good luck with that.

Trump
inadvertently emphasized that at the core this is about whether the
intelligence community has discovered the president of the United States is
compromised. That cannot very well be left solely to congressional partisans or
to a Justice Department that reports to him.

Translate This Page

Contact Me to Order Title Work

LGBT Legal Services

About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

Disclaimer on Opinions and Content

This Blog contains content that may be innapropriate for readers under the legal age of 18. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Thank you

This is an opinion and commentary blog and the opinions and contents of this Blog - including opinions expressed concerning opponents of LGBT equality - are the opinions only of the individual blogger and should not be attributed to any other individuals or to any organization of which the blogger is a past or current member.

Followers

Michael-in-Norfolk disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, operability, or availability of information or material displayed on this site and does not claim credit for any images or articles featured on this site, unless otherwise noted. All visual content is copyrighted to it's respectful owners. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, and Michael-in-Norfolk does not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site's content. If you own rights to any of the images or articles, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact Michael-in-Norfolk via e-mail and they will be promptly removed. Michael-in-Norfolk contains links to other Internet sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience and are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information or content in such site has been endorsed or approved by this blog.